NEW DELHI: He is an 18-year-old somewhere in India. Or so, he says. And he is part of Legion, the hacker group that has got India's attention after several high-profile email and Twitter hacks, and some extensive data dumps. On Wednesday evening, he shared with TOI a list of what he claims are email addresses and passwords of nearly 74,000 chartered accountants in the country.

Over an encrypted text chat, the hacker also claimed to have already compromised the accounts of former IPL chairman Lalit Modi, and the sansad.nic.in domain though the data is yet to be dumped. In a veiled threat, he also said Delhi Police should strengthen their own passwords rather than try to catch them.

"We have dumpz (sic) from all the major institutions...all the major banks and passwords...of all da chartered accountants in INDIA. And those that had the same pw on Dropbox? Too bad, they got owned (compromised) and all the dox were dumped. The people they work for? Too bad for them too. Raw data brings chaos," the hacker said, sharing a link to the email and password list. He also claimed the group would release more raw data without sifting through it.

The hacker TOI spoke with answered questions selectively, ignoring some while typing back expansively for others. In the beginning, he emphasised their activities were purely for the "Lulz" - a term that means "just for kicks" - and that they were just cyber criminals and drug addicts. For a few minutes, he claimed to be "individually a group of people". However, he soon began to speak of a group of individuals, which Legion has earlier claimed to be numbering in the "higher single digits". The group has been working as "Legion" for just a few weeks, he said.

The hacker TOI interacted with claimed that they did not care for politics, and insisted he was "sick" of "this bulls**t". However, when asked about results they expected from the leaks, he displayed a combative disinterest. "Do you think we care too much (about results)?" he asked, and later added, "We are not your heroes. We are drug addicts and cyber criminals. We love to spread disinfo...create chaos, map all da networkz..."

As for investigations by Delhi Police, the hacker said, "Good luck to them". He referred to the illegal procurement of call detail records of VIPs, in which Delhi Police officials along with some private individuals (ethical hackers) were arrested in November 2013. "Delhi Police should probably spend their time thinking of better passwords for their servers and not downloading backdoored CDR analysis software perhaps. That might actually help them do something productive... like say not get owned for instance," he told TOI.

Since November 30, the group has compromised email and Twitter accounts of Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, liquor baron Vijay Mallya, and senior NDTV journalists Ravish Kumar and Barkha Dutt. The group released personal data of Mallya and Dutt online. They earlier threatened to do the same on Gandhi, and former IPL chairman Lalit Modi. And now, they claim the deed is already done. "The targets we mentioned are already 0wn3d (owned). Lalit Modi is retarded enough to not see that yet, however. Maybe he should spend his time in a more productive manner. Assume, procuring new d3v1c3s (devices)?" the Legion member said.

Several people ET spoke with about Ericsson’s India operations, including its current and former employees, said the Stockholm-based firm has reduced headcount in the last one year or so across functions, in line with its global restructuring.